Duplicate Content and Search Engines

I was ironing out some permission problems with a WordPress install the other day when I learned a little more about the .htaccess file.

If search engines find both www and non-www links from other sites to your site, they may treat https://YourSite.com and https://www.YourSite.com as two different websites with the same content. Trevor Ginn from Trevor Ginn advised me a while back that a site could be penalised for duplicate content.

So, the experts recommend you set up a 301 redirect (permanent redirect) from YourSite.com to www.YourSite.com, something like this in your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^YourSite\.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) https://www.YourSite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Obviously replacing “YourSite.com” with your actual domain name.

Interestingly enough my old hosts sold ‘two bites at the SEO lolly!’ mmmh… they are my ‘old‘ hosts.

I am using Webhosting UK for LAMP and getting some very good support for my WordPress sites.